


Teshuvah

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Jewish Character, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Paganism, Post-Canon, Religion, Sexual Content, sex as self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 04:51:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3344288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In six parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teshuvah

**Author's Note:**

> http://aquatank.tumblr.com/post/110796522556/i-havee-a-million-fanfic-ideas-i-never-use-here-is
> 
> http://saltvwater.tumblr.com/post/110793076086/cleanse-the-holy-soul-with-herbs-and-soap-watch
> 
> dont ask me what the words in italics mean. they just seemed to fit when i was writing. warnings: vomit, drugs, implied suicide, mentions of animal death, grossness. this is pretty gross.

Part one. Brian, _the Holy Ark opens and the congregation stands up for prayer._

Brian crawls out of the rain one January night and falls asleep on the porch steps. Tim finds him, blinking against the sunlight, unable to form coherent sentences, scratching at his head lice, as he's leaving for work, and he takes his old friend into the house he shares with Jay and calls in sick.

The bathroom door opens to the smell of candles Jay left burning and herbs spread across the counter, to cleanse, to purify, to bless the walls of a pagan's home. Brian watches with empty eyes as the mud and grime washes down the drain, and Tim scrubs his hair before it starts falling out in the bathtub. The shampoo makes the bad memories smell good, at least.

The apocalypse recedes from the holy water and Brian thinks he is saved. He kisses Tim's forehead, and his smile is white teeth and sunshine. He blows out the candles, burns the dirty hoodie, and shaves his head bald. He refuses to sleep in a bed – he sleeps in the shed for a solid couple of months, then on the roof when the cold snap passes, then settles in the closet. He takes an online course to legally become a rabbi, and, by springtime, Tim is the only remaining atheist in the house.

Half of Brian is human, and half of him is under a dirty hoodie. None of him remembers what happened. His hair grows back thinner, and he talks to G-d. Wait until Thursday to do the dishes, He says. Only do the laundry when the neighbors are gone, He says. The FBI planted cameras in the shed, so don't open the door unless absolutely necessary. 

He is a vessel of flesh and bone and he no longer understands which half of Brian he is. Either way, he is thankful. He is happy. He gives hugs that squeeze the breath out of Tim. Jay gives him a tarot reading and Brian tells him that divination is beautiful and that he will start a garden to help with his rituals. Unfortunately, he forgets to water the flowers, but he remembers when to visit the local synagogue.

Part two. Jay, _Rubber duck debugging._

“I want to have my first kiss before I die.” And Tim parks on the side of a road that isn't ten feet under snow, takes the camera out of Jay's hands, and kisses him. They fuck on Christmas Eve and get married a week later. The state of Alabama can't refuse a marriage license to two men if one of them is legally female; the court has to choose between gatekeeping a trans man from being recognized as male or denying the validity of a same-gender couple.

They don't do it for any political reasons, don't do it as a fuck you to the government. In fact, they're terrified of media attention. They do it to make tax filing easier. They do it so they can visit each other in the hospital in case one of them is injured. Just for boring legal reasons, Jay tells himself as Tim's dick hits the back of his throat.

The second time Tim kisses him, there's a bullet in his side, and he asks for a cigarette before he bleeds out. Tim doesn't say a word as he drives him to the hospital, and the silence still keeps Jay up at night.

He gets a phone call from a lawyer who tells him his mother is dead, and she left him a good amount of money and the house he grew up in. The house is a small cottage in the country, and he remembers long grass and long hair, hiding from a daughter's name and watching the blue jays escape when he couldn't. How ironic that the place he never thought he'd survive living through until he was eighteen is now his only hope for survival.

He says, “Oh. Okay. How did she die. Oh. Okay. Oh.” He does not feel a thing. He does not feel a thing. He does not feel a thing.

There's no justification for moving in together besides – they need each other, and Jay is very much in love with Tim. 

He sees the sunrise a lot, simply because he stays up so late. He wants Tim to kiss him more, but their lips never seem to meet. Tim's mouth is on his neck, on his shoulders, between his legs, but never going for his mouth. Tim likes roughness, but he can't have sex with the lights on. He likes glory holes, he likes blindfolds, he likes the downward dog position when riding Jay's plastic cock. Jay gives a blowjob inches away from his dead parents' bedroom and doesn't. Feel a single thing.

Not a lot makes him happy these days. He works as a programmer and hates his job. His eyesight is going to shit. Somehow, he gets skinnier than before. Carpal tunnel syndrome has a personal vendetta against him. He has a panic attack when he can't tell if a stranger has a face or not. He flinches at doors opening, windows closing, and creaking floors. He sits on Tim's lap and whines about how his day went, and then grinds down and goes for Tim's belt buckle.

Paganism keeps him grounded. Incense, crystal pendants, scrying glasses – he finds his spirituality in fungi and fluorite, raw meat and rose quartz. He's seen unbelievable horrors; he has a right to believe in magic. He lights a candle when the nightmares leave him screaming. He makes a wand out of a twig and draws sigils in the dirt. The practice calms him, but cannot cure him.

He pukes up a lot of what he eats but that doesn't make him sick. What makes him sick is that he's been fingerfucked in the kitchen where, his freshmen year of high school, his mom held the phone by the cord and told him, teary-eyed, that his dad got in a car accident and won't be coming home. What makes him sick is that he misses how the tall, faceless thing brought him and Tim together. What makes him sick is that wearing a pacifier comforts him.

He fills the empty rooms with dolls. Baby dolls, broken dolls, Raggedy Anns, stuffed animals, Barbie and Ken dolls. Cabinets and shelves full of dolls. They are plastic angels watching over him with glass eyes and sweet faces. They are protection spells he doesn't have to cast.

They freak Tim out. When Brian moves in, he says he loves them, and he means it sincerely. The word _love_ makes his head hurt, and he looks at Tim as he takes some ibuprofen. Tim doesn't meet his eye, and he doesn't say a thing. He doesn't say a single thing.

Part three. Alex, _The hares can run from the bloodhounds but the dogs will sniff him out._

What Alex remembers is blood, and a pounding in his skull, a violent pounding that shook his bones out of place and rearranged him until he was unrecognizable even to himself. It gave him a purpose and promised him he didn't have to be in control. It put a gun in his hand and told him he could put it to his head when the rampage was over.

By the time the police arrest him for theft and drug use, the gun is long gone and so is his noble cause. He's hospitalized for two years but is released early for good behavior. Being a white man in the South, he's not likely to be punished long for his crimes. The cops won't do it, so he'll do it himself.

LSD, cocaine, heroine. Whatever will kill him faster. His fingernails are stubs. His back hurts. He injects needles in old scars from the woods and syringes in fresh bruises from bar fights. He relishes the feeling of his body giving up on him.

He lives out of his car and picks up dead animals to bury them. He blocks traffic to scrap roadkill off the street, and he digs a hole for the remains. He puts flowers on the gravestones of people he didn't know. He mourns at the funerals of strangers. He smells like he belongs eight feet under the earth, and he can't wait to get there.

Brian doesn't recognize Alex when he follows him to the synagogue. He wore his least filthy shirt today. Alex listens when Brian smiles and tells him about the word of G-d. He walks with him into sanctuary, and he respectfully puts on a kippah at the door. His soul is not holy or pure, but he stands up when Brian does and he reads along with the prayers, printed in Hebrew and English.

If he closes his eyes and pretends he is a faithful man, it's almost like he isn't dying.

Part four. Jessica, _There is something trapped in her that's trying to get out through nosebleeds and headaches._

A year after Tim told her that Jay moved away and he's thinking of doing the same, he calls her and asks her to meet up with him during his lunch break. She drives three hours to the construction site he works at and demands answers without smoke being blown in her face.

“The reason I wanted you to come, it's...” He stares at the gum on the ground. “How are things with you? Are you noticing, a change, any kind of change?”

Jessica mulls over the last year she's spent waiting for her med refills and hopping jobs. “I can't tell. Not much of a difference. Why do you ask?”

“Maybe it's just us. I've been feeling, better? Sort of. I feel like something's changed but I think it's for the better. Something, just something, changed.”

“Us? Who else are you talking about?”

He taps his fingers against the table and bites his lips, thinking about his next cigarette. “Jay and I are living together. We're, uh, married.”

“Oh, congrats.”

They keep in contact, but she doesn't trust them. Jay breaks down when she talks to him, and she has to move the phone away from her ear as he sobs out broken apologies. Tim sends her money she regretfully depends on, and she checks in every once in a while to make sure Jay's eating and Tim's sleeping and Brian hasn't dropped off the face of the Earth.

A beaten-up car drives by her house at the same time once a week. She recognizes the driver and gives him time to confront her. She's eating instant noodles on a Saturday afternoon, watching sitcoms that make her laugh dryly, when Alex knocks on her door.

“What changed?” she asks him immediately. “I know something's changed. What happened?”

His eyes are bloodshot and he smiles with yellow teeth. “I ate it.”

Her skin crawls. “You...ate what?”

“I ate it. I ate it. I can feel it trying to crawl out of me, but I gotta keep it in. I ate it.” He gives a laugh that comes out as more of a cough. “It can't follow us anymore.”

“What the hell did you eat?”

“It was like, a burned marshmallow. All gooey and messy. It trusted me, a little. It trusted me, and it tried to crawl away, didn't even try to teleport...It didn't have skin. I ate it.”

She doesn't feel like asking him any more questions.

She gives him clean clothes and dinner. She helps him bring two packs of water bottles to his car. He sleeps on her bathroom floor, and she locks the door to make sure he doesn't try anything. She keeps a gun under her pillow that night – she's gotten good with a gun, as good as she is at lying to her therapist.

In the morning, she punches him and warns him not to come near her again.

Part five. Tim, _Sex is his religion but no matter how much he devotes his body to the practice, he feels blasphemous._

A deer that almost made him crash, a lunar eclipse he tried to get on camera, a napkin holder in Wendy's, a gas station near the house. The foot of some guy he gave a blowjob to after meeting on Grindr. The highway he drives on coming home from work. Brian smiling. And Jay. Jay squinting at his computer, Jay tying his shoes, Jay pouring milk into his cereal, Jay's ass.

Tim keeps a scrapbook instead of a YouTube channel. He presses the wilted flowers from the garden Brian forgot about in the pages and preserves them. He takes pictures for the other part of his brain, pictures of slugs and dying leaves and centipedes. The other part doesn't wake up, but he can feel them festering. Wilting like the flowers.

Jay understands that he can't be in a closed relationship, but he doesn't understand that there's a rough, unspeakable half of him that wants to run into the night howling and causing fistfights and getting deepthroated by strangers. A half of him he can't cope with like Brian. He would pray for healing, pray for salvation, pray with an old friend who can't remember what he did but still feels that tugging need to redeem his soul, but he feels like every higher power would look down on him. Sinful. Dirty. A pleading, desperate piece of shit, who has breakdowns as much as he hallucinates. Which is happening more frequently to fill the hole, the missing something, the changed something.

In all the pictures he takes, he no longer sees a figure in a funeral suit waiting in the background.

Skin slaps skin, and Jay lets out a high pleased groan when Tim shifts his hips. A tongue runs over the fingers, coated in drool, that he has stuffed in Jay's mouth. Jay breathes like he's coming up from underwater, sucking on his fingers and trying to press Tim deeper into him. His legs are cramping up but he fucks him through his climax.

Tim hasn't changed out of his work clothes, and the only thing Jay's wearing is one of Tim's shirts. His legs are hooked around him, and his feet, with socks on, are up in the air.

“Can you – just, please –” He takes Tim's hand and guides him down to his dick. He's about the size of Tim's thumb, and every time Tim thrusts he rubs against his t-cock. Tim spits on his fingers and jerks him off using his index finger and thumb. Brian's gone, so Jay moans as loud as he wants.

When Tim pulls out, Jay's a shaking mess, and he falls against the bed. Tim doesn't tie the condom, since there's nothing to spill out, and he tosses it in the trash. Jay rolls over and sighs happily into the pillow. He looks up when he hears Tim zipping up his pants. “Wait, but you didn't finish.”

Tim shrugs. “It's okay.”

“But I like getting you off.” He reaches into Tim's pants and frowns when he finds that he's gone soft so quickly.

“It's okay,” Tim repeats. Jay takes out his hands and sits back on the bed.

“Am I not...” He swallows. “Am I not, pleasing you, is it because –”

“Jay, it's...it's not you, it's me?” Tim says weakly. He mumbles about needing a smoke and leaves the room, not wanting to see Jay's expression.

He walks out on the porch as Brian gets back home. He lifts a hand in greeting but freezes when he notices the man getting out of the passenger seat.

That's impossible. Tim and Jay left him in the school. He carried Jay out and left the monsters behind.

“I brought a friend,” Brian says innocently. “He says he wishes to repent. I brought him home for dinner.”

Tim stomps off the porch and slugs Alex in the jaw. Skin slaps skin. And it makes his blood boil, makes the other part of his brain bare their teeth. This is what they wanted, what they needed. His monster was never gone, really. He hisses, “You fucking manipulative asshole, you use my friend to find where we live – I don't care, I will –” He holds Alex up so he can aim a good punch at his eye, give him the nasty bruise he deserves. _“I will rip you apart and eat you -”_

“Friend.” Brian puts a hand on Tim's shoulder, and he stills. “This will lead you nowhere.”

He can't respond. He feels like he's swallowed fire, and all he can think about is letting himself burn and dragging Alex down to Hell with him.

“We are not a part of this story anymore. We were finished with our arc before part one.” Brian slowly pulls Tim away from Alex. The heaving fire in his chest becomes a regular heartbeat once more. Tim looks with surprise at his fists, and Brian's easy smile returns.

“You did something,” Tim croaks. He glares at Alex. “You did. Something. I don't know what you did, but I can feel it. Something's missing.”

Alex's right eye is swollen and his nose is bleeding. He doesn't bother wiping away the blood; he runs his hands over his stomach like he's about to puke. “I'm going to die.”

Tim wants to press further but he can't. He wants to lay down. He wants to get out of his work clothes and sleep next to Jay, if he isn't too pissed at him. He sighs, and extends a hand towards Alex. “We're all gonna die someday, aren't we?”

Alex looks at his hand strangely, and then hesitantly reaches out to shake it.

“Friends?” Brian says.

“I wouldn't say that–” Tim stops. He shakes his head. “Whatever. You think you're dying? This house is full of morbid as shit people. You wanna stay here and be morbid with us?”

“You would let me stay here?”

“He wants to repent,” Brian reminds Tim.

“Repent all you want. But don't expect me to ever forgive you. I could, however...tolerate you. I mean, you're...” He shuffles his feet. “Human. You're human, too.”

“Half human.”

“What?”

Alex rubs his stomach again. “Half human. I can feel it, melting, and I don't know how much of me is left to melt.”

Part six. Amy, Sarah, Seth, Rocky. _blood. blood. blood. blood._

Rest in peace.


End file.
